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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Matthias" data-source="post: 6053048" data-attributes="member: 3625">If Pathfinder operated under real-world "laws of nature", you would not see spell effects manifest in integer increments, any more than you would see characters constrained to move around in 5-foot increments in the middle of a combat encounter. Having spell effects be dependent on class level and occuring in multiples of rounds or minutes saves GMs time by not making them do math that is more complicated than simple addition.If you could run a Pathfinder simulation on a sufficiently advanced network server, you could generate precise fractional caster levels in real time, thereby calculating spell effects down to a fraction of a second, using the following formula:C + (A / M)whereC = current class levelA = XP accumulated beyond the minimum for the current class levelM = Minimum amount of XP to reach the next class levelIn such an environment, you could also totally get rid of round-based combat in favor of an encounter clock and encounters being played in real time--or at least in-game real time, where X number of seconds in the real world equates to 1 second in the game world, and all creatures (including NPCs and monsters) are making decisions independently of one another.However, such increases in realism are not really necessary because the current paradigm works just fine.</blockquote>